USAir Airbus Industrie A-319-112 accident
Airbus Industrie A-319-112 · Accident: airframe, component or system failure while taxiing
From Tampa International Airport (TPA) to Pittsburgh International Airport (PIT)
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA04LA004
- Event typeAccident: someone killed or seriously injured, or the aircraft substantially damaged (NTSB definition). Incident: an occurrence that affected or could have affected safety, short of that. Glossary
- Accident
- InvestigationHow far the investigation had got when the record was published: preliminary, ongoing, final or completed. Unknown where the source does not say. Glossary
- Completed
- API-reported fatalities
- 0 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- Unknown
- OperationWhat kind of flying it was, grouped by the rules it flew under: airline (US Part 121), air taxi and commuter (Part 135), general aviation (Part 91 and similar), military or government. Glossary
- Airline
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Airbus Industrie A-319-112
- Aircraft type
- Airbus A-319
- Category
- Airplane
- RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
- N764US
- Operator
- USAir
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Tampa International Airport (TPA), Tampa, FLTo Pittsburgh International Airport (PIT), Pittsburgh, PA
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- Flight rulesThe regulations the flight operated under: in the US, Part 91 (general aviation), Part 121 (airlines), Part 135 (air taxi and commuter) and others; for flights abroad, the NTSB's coarser commercial or non-commercial code. Glossary
- Part 121: Air Carrier
- Phase of flightThe stage of the flight when things started to go wrong: standing, taxi, takeoff, initial climb, en route, maneuvering, approach or landing. Glossary
- Taxi · to runway
- First occurrenceThe single coded event the NTSB judges best describes what happened (records from 2008 on). Older records name the first occurrence in the sequence instead. Glossary
- Airframe, component or system failure
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- None
Cause areas
- Landing gear, steering system › Failure, partial
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The captain said that while taxiing to runway 36L, the airplane simultaneously lost steering, and he and his first officer received two electronic centralized aircraft monitor (ECAM) messages related to steering, flight controls, and brakes. The airplane veered left and the captain said he had to brake abruptly to avoid exiting the taxiway. U.S Airways maintenance personnel performed operational tests on the brakes and steering system and faults were found to exist with the Brake Steering Control Unit (BCDU). Messier-Bugatti, manufacturer of the BSCU, inspected and tested the effected BSCU, and according to their report, the BCDU was found not to be fully functional.
Probable cause
An intermittent fault with the airplane's Brake Steering Control Unit (BSCU) for undetermined reasons, which resulted in a momentary loss of brakes and steering, and a serious injury to a flight attendant during the resultant sudden stop during taxi for takeoff.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA04LA004
- Event ID
- 20031027X01814
- Case number
- MIA04LA004
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (5)
- Unreviewed is an editorial label, not an investigation status. API-sourced is not report-checked or human-reviewed. Explicit event totals are used without summing aircraft injury tables; onboard allocation is withheld. Unknown values remain unknown. The operation category is mapped from the NTSB-reported FAR part and has not been reviewed.
- Filled from the NTSB case API where the bulk record had no value: investigation status, coordinates, damage. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date, which is the same as the UTC date the NTSB stores.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 6a793476397689aa9c33988af12c790b5c018504c37b5f44296ff2712534887e; retrieved 2026-09-18T15:38:32.781Z.
- The NTSB's operator name is blank for N764US; the operator shown is the name the NTSB's other records give its FAA operator code, USAA.